September 14 – Tom’s sister-in-law gave him some tickets to the Jackson Browne concert at the Beacon Theatre, and he invited me. I hadn’t seen the Beacon since they spruced it up several years ago – wow! It’s beautiful now. And it was definitely a trip down memory lane to see Jackson Browne again. He was an important singer-songwriter in my college days, and his first three albums figure heavily in my pantheon. I saw him a few times back in those days, but I don’t think I’d laid eyes on him for years til I watched the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony last year, where he looked pretty good (for a guy in his sixties!), much better than Crosby, Stills, Nash, or Young. And his voice has held up pretty well, too. He’s not anywhere near as great a songwriter as, say, Joni Mitchell or Laura Nyro – the rolling shapelessness of his compositions is both endearingly particular to him and a little monotonous – but as a lyricist he’s unafraid to explore emotional depths that are unusually nuanced, especially for men. In songs like “My Opening Farewell,” “Fountain of Sorrow,” and “Late for the Sky,” he zeroes in on the loneliness that erupts surprisingly in the middle of an intimate relationship. Hearing him sing “Fountain of Sorrow” in concert brought tears to my eyes, especially the verse that goes
When you see through love’s illusions, there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool
So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger
While the loneliness seems to spring from your life
Like a fountain from a pool
He did a few recent songs I didn’t recognize, but I was surprised and pleased that he did a lot of his early (and best) songs: “For Everyman,” “For a Dancer,” “Rock Me on the Water,” and of course crowd-pleasers like “Running on Empty,” “The Pretender,” and “Doctor My Eyes.” For me the highlight was his stripped-down, almost solo piano rendition of “Late for the Sky,” which Tom had never heard and also liked.
There wasn’t exactly an opening act, but Browne came out with his wizardly guitarist and longtime buddy David Lindley to play a bunch of acoustic duets, including songs by Warren Zevon, Danny O’Keefe, and Bruce Springsteen. The Springsteen was a song I don’t remember hearing before, “Brothers Under the Bridge,” about homeless vets. A moving song, beautifully constructed with a Springsteen twist – after several verses of rhymed couplets ending in the title phrase, the song ends up in the air like this:
Come Veterans’ Day I sat in the stands in my dress blues
I held your mother’s hand
When they passed with the red, white and blue
One minute you’re right there … and something slips…
another eye opens 